Kenya`s Runners Of The Rift It`s Altitude And Attitude, Location And Vocation: The Best On All Counts.

July 13, 1992|By KEN STEPHENS, Dallas Morning News

ELDORET, Kenya -- When Kip Keino was a farmer`s son living in a mud hut, his neighbors didn`t know what to think when they saw him running along the red dirt lanes of the Nandi Hills early every morning.

``People would say, `You are chasing the wind. Why?` They thought I was a madman,`` Keino said. ``But I knew what I was doing.``

When Keino thrashed Jim Ryun to win a gold medal in the 1,500-meter run at the 1968 Olympics, they too, knew.

Keino, who won three more Olympic medals, ushered in a new era in distance running, one in which the center of gravity began to shift, inexorably, to Africa, and to Kenya, and a runner`s Xanadu known as the Great Rift Valley.

Before the 1964 Olympics, Africa, excluding apartheid bastion South Africa, had won only 20 Olympic medals. That year, Kenya, less than a year old as an independent nation, competed in the Games for the first time. Since then, Africa has won 70 medals, including 31 by Kenya, despite boycotts of the 1976 and 1980 Games.

Of Kenya`s 31 medals, 23 have been won by track and field athletes, nearly all born in the Great Rift Valley.

As these Olympics approach, Kenya is poised again with medal contenders in every men`s race from 800 meters to the marathon.

Why the Kenyans are so good at distance running is complex. Often the explanation is that Kenyans live and train at high altitude.

``As long as I`ve spent here, I still don`t know the answer,`` said Brother Colm O`Connell, headmaster and track coach at St. Patrick`s High School in Iten, which has sent a dozen to the Olympics since 1972. ``It`s probably a subtle combination of all sorts of reasons. Altitude is a factor, diet, their approach or attitude toward running, the climate, their backgrounds, growing up with running.

``From a very young age, they are walking to school, walking as they tend cows, taking shortcuts over hills. Running also provides opportunities to travel, recognition, financial rewards and education.``

But the reasons are inevitably rooted in the land.

Set back a few miles from the valley`s western rim is the tiny hamlet of Kilibwoni. Outside the village, down a dirt road that quickly dissolves to no more than a couple of muddy tire tracks disappearing across the grass, is the mud-walled, tin-roofed hut that was Kipchoge Keino`s home when he set out for the `68 Olympics.

Although Keino, 52, lives on a larger farm near Eldoret, he still owns and regularly visits his 50-acre plot near Kilibwoni, where field hands tend crops of tea, maize, cane, bananas, avocados, other fruits and vegetables.

From here, Keino can stand and point to the homes of a dozen household names in distance running. To the left, his neighbor is Peter Koech, the record holder and a silver medalist in the steeplechase in 1988. To the right is Joshua Kipkemboi, a three-time Kenyan champion in the steeplechase.

On a nearby ridge is the country home of Mike Boit, the 800-meter bronze medalist at the `72 Olympics. Somewhere off to the right is Sammy Koskei, who went to Southern Methodist in the early `80s and still has the third-fastest 800 meters.

Back out on the main road, a little over a mile to the west, is Ibrahim Hussein, three times the winner of the Boston Marathon and once the champion of the New York Marathon. To the north, back toward Eldoret, is Amos Biwott, the `68 Olympic gold medalist in the steeplechase. Nandi tribesmen all.

The Rift Valley is accepted as the greatest concentration of distance- running talent in the world.

But when Keino and teammates won eight medals at the `68 Olympics, critics said it wouldn`t happen again. It was believed that the Kenyans, whose homes were 6,000 to 9,000 feet above sea level, had a one-time advantage in Mexico City`s thin air 7,500 feet above sea level.

Keino and his teammates appeared to confirm their talent in Germany, in `72, when they won five more medals. But they were denied an opportunity to drive their point home before a world audience for the next 12 years because of consecutive Olympic boycotts.

During those years, Henry Rono, a Nandi, astounded the world when in one 80-day period in 1978 he set four world records in three events. But by the time Kenya returned to the Olympics in 1984, Rono wasn`t good enough any more. And Kenya, showing the effects of the boycotts, won only two medals in Los Angeles.

In `88, the Kenyans won seven more Olympic medals in South Korea. No one there expected Paul Ereng to win the 800; nobody took Peter Rono, at 5 feet 5 3/4 and 117 pounds, seriously in the 1,500; and everyone thought John Ngugi was rabbiting in the 5,000 when he took off at the 1,000-meter mark and opened a 50-meter lead. All won golds.

Only in the steeplechase, an event Kenyans had won in three Olympics, was the 1-2 finish by Julius Kariuki and Koech not an upset.

Still, Boit recalled, the critics said Kenya was lucky and would not do so well at the `91 World Championships in Tokyo.